Many communities have become concerned about the volume of waste material that they collect and the methods used for its disposal. As a result, more attention is being directed toward alternative methods of waste disposal that do not pollute the environment while reducing the amount of material that must be burned, dumped or buried at landfills.
One method of waste disposal frequently touted is the composting of organic wastes. In this method, organic materials are collected and then placed into piles where they decompose into an organic end product material that can be used as a fertilizer.
As a first step in starting a composting program, many communities are investigating the feasibility of composting the yard wastes that are normally collected. Examples of this type of waste material are leaves, grass clippings and branches. These materials are often collected along with regular trash and are brought to landfills where they are buried and occupy valuable landfill space.
To compost these materials, one must collect them separately from the non-compostable trash. Once collected, the yard waste must be transported to an area where it can be further processed, if required, and then put into compost piles.
While composting is a simple and inexpensive process, there are significant problems involved in the collection, transport and processing of the raw yard waste materials. Firstly, many different types of removal equipment are required to pick up the different forms of yard waste. For example, standard refuse trucks are normally used to collect bagged yard waste. On the other hand, branches are often collected by throwing them into a chipper machine that is towed by a dump truck which receives the discharged wood chips. Piles of leaves are usually collected using a truck that vacuums the leaves from the ground and deposits them into an enclosed hopper. For thick branches, a standard dump truck is often used with the sanitation personnel manually lifting the limbs onto the truck.
A second problem experienced with the collection and transport of yard waste is that an excessive amount of time is required to collect the different forms of yard waste. This occurs when different crews must be sent to the same collection site. This wasted time increases costs and also makes the collection process more complex to schedule.
Thirdly, some processing of the collected wastes may be required before they are in an optimum form for composting. For example, large logs and branches must be cut into wood chips to reduce the time required for their decomposition. Leaves should also be reduced in size so that when they are put into the compost piles, they can break down at an accelerated rate. This processing requires that the different materials be initially sorted so that they can be handled by the proper cutting machine.
As one can see from the above, a composting program that makes use of a number of different types of yard waste must overcome significant problems in the collection, transport and handling/processing of the waste materials. The above noted problems all adversely affect the economic feasibility of starting a composting program.